A Week
One of my target schools offers a service of assessing one's chances of being accepted to its MBA program. It starts with a web form and some short essays. A while back, I felt this would be a good thing to do, so I filled it out. They promise a response in 15 business days. Their response was a short email asking me to call them. Initially, I took this as a good sign, because if I was clearly not what they were looking for they wouldn't need to talk to me. Being in Europe, their day starts unnaturally early and I had to get up that early to call them. I called them, but didn't get through. Feel free to reread that last sentence about 10 times, because that's about how many times it happened. I became a little frustrated and decided to email to make sure that I was calling at a reasonable time and to see if I could set an appointment. They didn't respond to the email. After a week of waiting and infrequent calling, I began to wonder what was up. Did I do something so offensive on the voice mail that they decided to screen my emails and calls? I decided to be more pointed in my pursuit and went to the web to find all the details about the person who contacted me. There is a web form to contact anyone at the school. I employed it to ask what was up. Shortly after sending that off, I realized that my first email had been sent to the broadcast email address and not to the email address of a person.
Those activities didn't actually happen this week, more last month. But, I had to do something to keep myself occupied until this week arrived.
This week started with my accidental, regular travel companion leaving. I have no plans to see him again (which was the case every other time one of us moved on). It was quickly followed by my aunt dying. Fortunately, not an aunt I had ever met: the sister of my host-mother. That changed the tone of my house, everyone is active mourning and sometimes crying, but never eating. I believe that happened on Monday.
On Tuesday, I finally connected with the school about my chances at their MBA. They wanted to confirm that I really haven't worked for three years. They told me that I was well suited for their program, but that potential employers would not be happy with my giant vacation and that I should get a job. Getting told to 'get a job' is normally bad, but not in my case; I had thought that getting a job now would hurt my chances because it wouldn't be at the level of my previous work and I was therefor trying to survive on a very tight budget until school started. Everything they told me was good news.
I spent Tuesday night updating my resume. I have planned on moving away from tech for a while, so I didn't have an up-to-date technical resume (or anything even close). I sat down and wrote a new resume from a blank document. I managed to get the whole thing produced in three hours and it passed the first review. That had never happened before; resumes usually take me about one month to write.
The week was getting warmed up by Wednesday. I was digging right in in deciding what to do for work and focusing on where I wanted to be doing it. My big targets are New York City, near either of my parents, Portland, and Europe. I got a wonderful surprise when I learned that I get a permanent Irish green card in under 2 years after minimal hoops. To say that I was excited to learn that would be an understatement. On first inspection, I found several jobs that are right on target for what I'm after and capable of getting. I'll keep looking to see if there are other good options on the continent, too.
Anything else interesting happen? I learned that I might get a visitor next week and I was asked to perform a marriage, but it's only Thursday morning.
Those activities didn't actually happen this week, more last month. But, I had to do something to keep myself occupied until this week arrived.
This week started with my accidental, regular travel companion leaving. I have no plans to see him again (which was the case every other time one of us moved on). It was quickly followed by my aunt dying. Fortunately, not an aunt I had ever met: the sister of my host-mother. That changed the tone of my house, everyone is active mourning and sometimes crying, but never eating. I believe that happened on Monday.
On Tuesday, I finally connected with the school about my chances at their MBA. They wanted to confirm that I really haven't worked for three years. They told me that I was well suited for their program, but that potential employers would not be happy with my giant vacation and that I should get a job. Getting told to 'get a job' is normally bad, but not in my case; I had thought that getting a job now would hurt my chances because it wouldn't be at the level of my previous work and I was therefor trying to survive on a very tight budget until school started. Everything they told me was good news.
I spent Tuesday night updating my resume. I have planned on moving away from tech for a while, so I didn't have an up-to-date technical resume (or anything even close). I sat down and wrote a new resume from a blank document. I managed to get the whole thing produced in three hours and it passed the first review. That had never happened before; resumes usually take me about one month to write.
The week was getting warmed up by Wednesday. I was digging right in in deciding what to do for work and focusing on where I wanted to be doing it. My big targets are New York City, near either of my parents, Portland, and Europe. I got a wonderful surprise when I learned that I get a permanent Irish green card in under 2 years after minimal hoops. To say that I was excited to learn that would be an understatement. On first inspection, I found several jobs that are right on target for what I'm after and capable of getting. I'll keep looking to see if there are other good options on the continent, too.
Anything else interesting happen? I learned that I might get a visitor next week and I was asked to perform a marriage, but it's only Thursday morning.